or writhing worm must needs arraign Fate, Destiny,
the Maker of the Earth, whatever It or He might be. But these voices
stilled, because, when all was said and done, the man was not wholly
a fool, and out of his heart came the wounding answer to his question:
'You, Paul Armstrong--you and none other! Neither this false friend,
nor that fraudulent lover, nor any Destiny whatsoever, but just Paul
Armstrong, to whom this bundle of sensibilities was entrusted for
safe-carriage, and who in bearing his parcel here and there has spilled
its contents with great recklessness, and with devilish consequence to
himself.' And this voice grew into the tolling of a great Despair, for
there was nothing to be done with this Paul Armstrong in the way of
reparation or amendment, and there was no way of being rid of him save
by suicide, and a doubt of the efficacy of that cure was heavy on him.
To endure the unendurable, this was his burthen; to be yoked through
time with this dolt and fool. Wretchedest of miserable fates, to loathe
one's own soul, to find the most despicable of creatures enclosed within
one's own skin. To play Siamese twin to a pustulous convict were a
trifle beside this. To be your own black beast; to loathe your own soul;
with a full heart to despise your own understanding--this is to start
upon Despair's Last Journey in one sense or another, to find either the
gulf or the gates of hope. For the alternative is eternal, and it will
yet be known to all men--if not here, then elsewhere--that the way to
the heights of spiritual wealth lies through the valley of spiritual
bankruptcy, and that a man's follies are as contributory to his soul's
salvation as his loftiest aspirations and his most ardent struggles.
Ralston spoke wisely when he said, 'We lose to learn value.' We shall
carry our cargo more carefully next time for having once shipwrecked it.
The gates of hope are a better goal to aim for than the gulf, because
the mariner saves time and suffering by passing through them, but the
lesson is that no shipwreck is final.

Was it, in truth, the father's voice, the authentic voice of William
Armstrong, Paul's physical begetter, which preached this gospel through
the lonely days and waking nights? The Exile could not tell, yet he
believed, and the faith grew within him, that God's inexorable justice
and infinite mercy are one and the same, that the human spirit which has
not sinned knows no virtue, that the flower of the soul